EP11 - Dracula (1977)

OPENING

Few monsters are as theatrical as the vampire. They first appeared onstage 200 years ago in Paris, long before Bram Stoker's notorious Dracula came along. But these blood-sucking monsters have actually been terrorizing us for nearly 1000 years, kept alive in folklore and mythologies from around the world. Here is Dacre Stoker, great-grandnephew of the infamous author, explaining what propelled these fears to a fever pitch centuries ago:

>>> Dacre Stoker 1

“There were significant amount of scares and concern about vampires that had been around since the 1700s, with the plagues and different diseases like cholera going through Europe and England itself. And people not quite comfortable that religion, which was normally their controlling factor, normally the place where people have these … weird questions answered by higher powers. In this case, they kind of lost faith in religions to tell them why these people are mysteriously dying.”

This eventually led to what we now call the Great Vampire Epidemic. With disease spreading throughout Eastern Europe, this led to a hysteria where supernatural causes were often blamed. And it all began in 1725, when a Serbian farmer died suddenly of unknown causes. According to legend, he crawled out of his grave at night and returned to his son’s house demanding food. But the son refused and was found dead the next day. Over the next eight days, nine more people died, each claiming on their deathbed that the farmer had come to them at night and choked them. The villagers had now had enough and armed themselves with religious symbols and garlic before exhuming the farmer’s body. What they found terrified them: he had no signs of decay and blood could be seen in his mouth. Out of sheer fear, they staked the corpse and burned it. And only then did the deaths stop.

This so-called “epidemic” may have ended in the 1750s, but reports like this multiplied and spread across Europe as respected newspapers covered stories about vampire trials and even protection methods. By the 1800s, vampires had crept into English literature as well, with one of the first examples simply titled The Vampyre, written in 1819 by John William Polidori. He was Lord Byron's physician and even patterned his vampire after Byron himself, transforming the terrifying zombie-like creature into a high society gentleman, who lures his prey with seduction and cunning. But the most famous vampire of all came to life in 1897 and has inspired Broadway and Hollywood ever since…

Bela Lugosi: “I am Dracula. I bid you welcome.”

"Welcome, if you dare, to a special Halloween edition of Closing Night, a theater history podcast about famous and forgotten shows that closed too soon. I'm Patrick Oliver Jones, your guide through the shadows of the Martin Beck Theatre, where serious plays, musical hits, and glorious flops all met their fate, revealing just how frightening and monstrous the road to Broadway can be.”

DRACULA COMES TO LIFE

(A howling noise is heard) Bela Lugosi: ”Listen to them, children of the night, what music they make.”

The fabled Count Dracula we think of today is quite different from the one Irish writer Bram Stoker originally conceived. He began his career as a drama critic in Dublin, but in 1878, London's most famous actor, Henry Irving, took over as the Theatre Manager of the Lyceum Theatre and appointed Stoker as his Business Manager. It was about 12 years later that Stoker began writing his novel, originally titled The Un-Dead. Now, many have assumed it was based on the historical figure Vlad Drăculea, otherwise known as “Vlad the Impaler.” But historians like Elizabeth Miller dispute this long-held belief. Based on Stoker’s actual notes, Miller points out that his ghoulish vampire was simply called Count Wampyr, until he came across a Romanian history book.

Elizabeth Miller: “And in it, he found a reference to a 15th-century ruler named Dracula who fought against the Turks and crossed the Danube River in his fight against them. That's all that was in it, except a footnote saying that Dracula in the Wallachian language means the devil. That's why Stoker picked the name … He went back to his notes, changed all the Count Wampyrs to Count Dracula.”

So while he may have borrowed the name from a historical figure, it was through a combination of Eastern European folklore and existing literary works that Stoker actually created the character of Dracula: a poorly dressed old, white-haired man with a long mustache, pointed ears, long sharp teeth, and hair on the palms of his hands. Only after feasting on the blood of the living would he take on a younger, less foreboding appearance. Stoker kept traits from vampire legends like vulnerability to garlic and wooden stakes, but then he added others like not being able to enter someone’s home unless invited and having no reflection in mirrors. Matt Wagner, a comic book writer and artist who created a Dracula series, shares another important aspect of Stoker’s narrative:

Matt Wagner: ”The original novel is what's described as epistolary, which means it's told in the form of letters, journals, news articles—there's no omniscient narrator. And the one voice missing is Dracula. And it works in the original novel, because it makes him a sinister kind of other, a presence."

With Stoker being a man of the theater, Dracula did appear onstage for the first time just days before the novel was to be published in 1897. To protect his rights under British copyright law, Stoker hastily staged a reading at the Lyceum, performed only once by junior members of the theater company. It was a very faithful adaptation, having been pasted together from pages of the manuscript and contained a prologue, five acts, and 40 scenes. It lasted more than four hours, and even Irving called it “dreadful,” but the reading did its job of protecting Stoker’s copyright, and the play was filed away and forgotten. The book, however, was not forgotten and was published on time on May 26, 1897. It had a modicum of success, bringing in some royalties, but it never earned Stoker much in the way of critical recognition.

You see, Stoker was actually a prolific writer beyond Dracula, having written 17 works of fiction and non-fiction as well as numerous other short stories. Yet when he died in 1912, he was merely considered a minor writer and actually best known for his biography of the actor Henry Irving. With Stoker gone, it fell upon his widow, Florence, to take over the business affairs and manage the literary rights to each of his works. She even released a collection of his short stories two years after his death, with the title story called "Dracula's Guest.” It was intended to be the opening chapter of Stoker's novel, but was ultimately cut from the final manuscript. Over the next several years all of his books went out of print, except for Dracula, which has actually never been out of print since it was published. Even still, it only brought in modest royalties as Florence's financial situation slowly began to deteriorate.

But in 1922, at the age of 64, she received an unmarked envelope from Berlin. Someone had sent her the advertisement to a German silent film called Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horrors that stated it was “freely adapted” from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. David Skal, the author of Hollywood Gothic, says this apparent plagiarism forced Florence into action.

David Skal: “Stoker's widow, you know, is a woman just obsessed and possessed with the idea that her rights were being infringed, and she would have the last word, and she did … and it was just fascinating. This thing was a soap opera.”

Florence waged a legal battle in the German courts with judgments and appeals going back and forth for years. While she did eventually win her case, the production company went bankrupt, and she wasn’t able to destroy all prints of the film, which is the only reason Nosferatu still exists today.

Meanwhile, an Irish actor named Hamilton Deane wanted to create his own Dracula adaptation for the stage. He had actually grown up near the Stokers (in fact, his mother was acquainted with Bram Stoker in her youth). Well, after he formed his own acting company in the 1920s, Deane decided to write his stage version during a four-week period of inactivity in 1923.

Deane changed certain aspects of the book to make it more feasible onstage. For instance, he eliminated most of the travels between Transylvania and England, to reduce the number of set changes. He also condensed or combined characters to fit his current acting company. But the greatest shift he made was to Dracula himself, transforming the grotesque creature in the novel into a mysterious yet cultured, courtly gentleman in formal evening clothes and most notably a high-collared cape, which could be used onstage to hide his magical exits through a trap door.

With his strong family ties to the Stokers, Deane approached Florence with his adaptation and asked for her authorization to produce it as a traveling show for his theater troupe. With Florence’s finances dwindling and debt piling up from the lawsuit, she had little choice but to accept Deane's offer, even though she found his adaptation to be lacking. So the tour began in May 1924, with Deane in the role of Van Helsing, and it played small towns and cities across Britain, where critics were mostly unimpressed but audiences loved it. After two years of packed houses on the road, Deane brought Dracula to London, where it opened on Valentine’s Day 1927. And just like on tour, the London critics didn't care much for it, but audiences couldn’t get enough of it. There were even uniformed nurses on hand each night to administer aid to faint-hearted theatergoers. The London Evening News reported on the growing popularity of Dracula:

“While glittering productions, costing thousands of pounds, have wilted and died after a week or so in the West End, Dracula has gone on drinking blood nightly.”

Broadway producer Horace Liveright happened to see the production in London, and he loved it so much he came back three more times. He later recalled, “Although it was badly produced, I got a kick out of it every time.” He wanted to bring that good time to Broadway, but felt Deane’s dialogue needed work. So with Florence’s permission, he hired playwright and screenwriter John Balderston to rework it, and the result was essentially an overhaul used only about 20 lines from Deane’s version but still kept the basic plot.

It centers on a young Lucy Seward who has fallen mysteriously ill, which motivates her father, her fiancé, and a specialist named Van Helsing to set out and find the cause. They soon realize that their charming new neighbor, Count Dracula, is a vampire, and that he has been feeding on Lucy. Together they track him down to his hiding place and destroy him with a stake through the heart. This Balderston version has been the blueprint for the play ever since, but it was actually Liveright’s casting choice that would change Dracula forever.

When a 46-year-old Hungarian actor named Béla Lugosi was cast in the title role, he had been in four other Broadway shows, yet was still relatively unknown. As a matter of fact, during his Broadway debut just five years earlier, Lugosi spoke no English at all and had to learn his lines phonetically. By the time Dracula opened on Broadway in October 1927, Lugosi’s command of the language was still quite limited. The director even had to use French during rehearsals, because it was the only language they both understood. However, his commanding stage presence, distinct cadence, and heavy accent worked brilliantly to create an exotic, hypnotic persona for the vampire. In a 1931 interview, Lugosi reflected on how the role affected him:

Bela Lugosi: ”Very much haunted me. I often dreamed of the dead. In the morning when I woke up, I was tired, depressed ... I guess I'm pretty much of a lone wolf. I don't say I don't like people at all, but to tell you the truth, I only like them if I have a chance to look deep into their heart and in their mind. If I find there's something worthwhile, some human kindness, some sympathy."

Well, audiences certainly found his performance worthwhile, and the play ran for 261 performances, closing in May of 1928. That summer Lugosi headlined a West Coast tour of the play, and afterwards decided to remain in Los Angeles. Over the course of Dracula’s Broadway run and national tours, producer Liveright made more than $2 million, but unfortunately he was terrible at money management and didn't even pay Florence the royalties she was due. Thankfully though, Florence received a sizable sum from Universal Pictures when they acquired the film rights to Dracula. However, Lugosi was not so lucky as he was not the studio's first choice to play the title character, or even their fifth or sixth choice. Nonetheless, throughout the fall of 1930 Lugosi campaigned hard for the role, eventually getting the part, and once again was a sensation when the film premiered in February 1931. It was one of the biggest films that year, and Lugosi became a global icon.

To exploit, I mean capitalize on, the success of the movie, someone thought that would be the perfect moment to bring Dracula back to Broadway. So a first-time Broadway producer opened a revival of the play just two months after the film's release, with a much lower budget and scale than Liveright’s version. But audiences who had seen Lugosi on the big screen, or in the original production, were not interested in a stage version with someone else, and it flopped after only 8 performances. Dracula as a character, however, would go on to appear in numerous movies and would eventually earn the Guinness World Record as the most produced literary character in film. Meanwhile, Dracula the play left the stage and remained buried for almost 50 years.

Bela Lugosi: “And now, I’ll leave you...good night.”

DRACULA RISES AGAIN

The Martin Beck Theatre had a long string of unsuccessful shows in the 1970s. During that decade, two productions closed after a month, two more were gone within a week, and two others didn't even make it past opening night. After so many productions flopped, the theater just seemed cursed, nothing could survive on that stage. But little did anyone know that a long-forgotten play was about to change things for the better at the Beck.

Ever since that failed 1931 revival of Dracula, there had been no efforts made to revive the play in America until 1973, when a producer named John Wulp founded the Nantucket Stage Company and chose Dracula as his first production. He wasn’t thinking of Broadway, he just wanted to offer something familiar for his audiences to balance out the other new works in that inaugural season. Based on the suggestion of a fellow Nantucket artist, Wulp made the fateful decision to ask writer and illustrator Edward Gorey to design the sets and costumes for Dracula. By this time, Gorey already had a cult following after years of creating vaguely ominous, Victorian-themed artwork with pen and ink, and who better to create the world of Dracula than someone named Gorey?

Anyway, that Nantucket production was directed by Dennis Rosa and starred Lloyd Battista, a TV character actor who had performed in three Broadway productions. Meryl Streep had even come in to audition for the role of Lucy, but the role went to Ann Sachs instead. The show's three-week run took place in a middle school auditorium. Still, the play became a big hit for the stage company that summer. A local theater critic called it an “extraordinary” and “delicious” production and noted Rosa’s “keenly sensitive” direction. But the New York Times credited someone else for the show’s success:

“This is the Edward Gorey production of Dracula, though Gorey is not the author, producer, or director. But more than anyone, he is responsible for the evening; it is his comically malevolent spirit that infects this Dracula.”

As more press covered the production, it caught the attention of several producers, who reportedly argued over who could bring it to Broadway. That process, though, took four long years as Wulp had to secure Broadway rights to the play, raise necessary financing, and find a team of co‐producers. Wulp would later say, “It is probably more interesting to try and make theater work in a small, contained place like Nantucket … than on Broadway.”

Ultimately, Jujamcyn Theaters took the lead in producing, and one of the first things they wanted was a new actor in the title role. One producer supposedly wanted to do it with Tab Hunter, but they opted for Frank Langella. Now, he came from a more classical background and had done both Broadway and film for 20 years, but he wasn’t really a breakout star yet. Although, he did have Obie and Drama Desk Awards to his name as well as a Golden Globe nomination. But more importantly for the producers, Langella was also a Tony winner, having won Best Featured Actor in 1975 for his portrayal of a human-sized lizard in Edward Albee's Seascape. In fact, Langella was in an Off-Broadway play when Wulp approached him about doing Dracula.

>>> Langella Interview 1: ”When I was first offered it, I thought I've never seen that character played in the way my instinct is telling me he should be played. So I read the book, and became more and more certain that I would not wear fangs, and more and more certain that I would never appear with blood coming down. And that I would play what I believed him to be. And I believed him to be deeply lonely, isolated as a result of his very interesting lifestyle.”

And when it came time for Langella to sign his contract, he even made them insert wording that clearly stated he would not wear nor could he be asked to wear fangs in the production. From the get-go, Langella made it clear this was going to be a different take than the one in Nantucket, where Battista had brought a balance of fright and humor to the role. But even with Langella taking over, it was decided that Battista would stay on with the production, only this time as the Dracula standby. To go from playing the lead role to now covering someone else in that role…as an actor, I can imagine how hard it must have been to just sit there, especially as Langella was still discovering the character and figuring out how to deliver the lines:

>>> Langella Interview 2: ”Once I got into a rehearsal, I hadn't realized how frightened I was, truly almost frozen with fear. And I couldn't come up with a way to play him, and I didn't wanna fall into the trap … I had to find a way to do it that was totally not Bela Lugosi. ‘I never drink wine’ … So I just spoke the lines like that, very, very simply and directly, terrifying the producers. And we had a dress rehearsal, and suddenly he arrived, the idea of him being a beautifully well-spoken Gothic hero.”

Interestingly enough, Lugosi reportedly had similar issues when he began rehearsals, worrying producers if he could do the role. But just like Lugosi, Langella eventually found his Dracula. And after a two-week, out-of-town tryout in Boston, Langella brought his gothic hero to the Martin Beck Theatre, opening on October 20, 1977. And the Halloween timing couldn’t have been better as the revival became an instant sensation with theatergoers. His Dracula wasn’t some grotesque monster, but something far more subtle and seductive: a charismatic aristocrat whose danger came from allure rather than horror. But even though audiences loved the show and Langella’s performance, the New York Times was less impressed:

“The effect of this Dracula is a beguilement that appears and submerges, separated by stretches of mere patience. Without doubt Mr. Gorey, a writer and illustrator, dominates the production. His color is gray, but what a witty and variegated gray it becomes … Mr. Langella is a stunning figure as Dracula: tall, pale, Byronic, with an occasional prosaic reflex as if he were mentally counting coffins. He is a beautiful and sensual Dracula—his seduction of Lucy is very fine — but he notably lacks terror. It is his lack of terror that makes the production hollow for all its graces. It is a defect in performing seriousness that affects pretty much the entire cast, however well they move about, and that makes the evening less than it could be.”

Regardless of whatever one thought of the performances, Gorey’s scenic designs and costumes were still the star of the show: three enormous black-and-white tableaus rendered in his signature inky, meticulous style, evoking the 1920s setting of the original Broadway production. The Beck Theatre's elaborate stonework and exotic murals also became a natural extension of that design, transitioning seamlessly from the real world into the play's monochromatic universe. And Gorey's visuals extended even beyond the stage, with his drawings used on posters, playbills, and merchandise as well.

At the 1978 Tony Awards, Dracula was the most nominated play that season with Langella and Rosa both receiving nominations. Gorey’s iconic set was also nominated for Best Scenic Design, but it was his moody, hand-detailed costumes that won him the Tony. The production itself won the Tony for Best Revival, and made Langella not only a star but a sex symbol as well:

>>> Langella Interview 3: “It was like being Elvis Presley for a year. I couldn't go down to the theater without bodyguards. And the play just struck a chord, particularly in women, and in men too, because there was a great love scene at the end of the second act. And I've never met anybody who's seen that play who hasn't said to me, ‘I got laid that night. So great.’ It was a year of my life, a great, sensational year. I doubt I'll ever have anything like that again.”

In many ways, Langella helped establish the "sexy vampire" archetype that would later show up in other shows from True Blood to Twilight. Raúl Juliá and others eventually stepped in to take over the role, and each actor built on the interpretation that Langella had created. By the time the play closed on January 6, 1980, Dracula had become one of the longest-running productions in Beck Theatre's history, with 925 performances.

And just as Lugosi had done nearly half a century earlier, Langella brought his version of Dracula to the big screen as well, which helped propel him to international fame. As for the Beck Theatre, even though the 1980s would lead to more short-lived productions, at least for two and a half years the Prince of Darkness himself brought a light to this seemingly cursed stage and made it the talk of the town.

“For a transcript and list of the references and resources used in this episode, you’ll find a link to that in the show notes. Closing Night is a production of WINMI Media, with me Patrick Oliver Jones as executive producer and host, with Dan Delgado as co-producer and editor. Theme music is by Blake Stadnik. Be sure to join me next time as another show makes its way to closing night.”

BONUS SEGMENT - 1931 Film Curtain Speech

Edward van Sloan: "Just a moment, ladies and gentlemen. A word before you go. We hope the memories of Dracula and Renfield won't give you bad dreams. So, just a word of reassurance. When you get home tonight and the lights have been turned out and you are afraid to look behind the curtains and you dread to see a face appear at the window, why, just pull yourself together and remember that after all, there are such things as vampires."